Season Summary

[KnightNight]

In bullets:
- Open with losses to Air Force ( OK), and Citadel ( Bad) - struggled early losing winnable games - NJIT and Marist being particularly painful.

- Enter League play projected as last place team. Sweep both Navy & Colgate who had 2 wins combined in league play - against each other !!! ( Colgate won both).
- Nice upset win at Holy Cross provided one more win in league that last year and 6th in conference ( up from 8th).

- 9 of 10 league losses ( including tournement) by double digits and most all those games were not close.

- Won one more game overall vs. 2011 schedule.

- Still very young but most team in the league have lots of returning starters . American always seems to bring an impact player in leaving a big conference school. Lafayeete losing 3 key contributors. Pretty youthful league otherwise - Bucknell looks especially stacked.

- How many underclassmen will return , especially out of this year's freshman class and who's in the pipeline that can impact in 2012-13 ? A rebound with some size and touch would be very significant, but very hard to find. Rumor suggests a strong contigent may be on the way but where are minutes going to come from ?

- Navy will remain down from all indications given the HUGE loss of J.J. Avila. We will need to put our foot on their throats.

- A similar soft schedule out of conference like this year, and a great majority of minutes returning suggests a 15-17 win season may in line with goal of 6-8 , 7-7 in league play.

- Dream season - 18 wins and playing in Patriot League Championship. Win or lose, that would be the biggest year in 35-40 years.

 

[Airstrike]

Valid bullet points, KnightNight. I will only comment on #7 and #9.

#7... With this year's roster of 20 and losing just 3 seniors, plus bringing in a projected 8 Prepsters and 2 Direct Admits, it appears there could be a serious overcrowding issue next season. I would expect several underclassmen who saw little to no PT consider dropping off unless they show significant improvement during off-season. I would expect Spiker to try to bolster his team's ability to take care of the ball, rebound and be a threat in the paint to score plus give the perimeter shooters more open looks. The incoming group should provide improvement in all those
areas.

#9... Haven't seen the schedule for next year, but heard through the grapevine there may be non-conference games scheduled against some tougher opponents. This means potentially lower total non-conference wins but also provides better preparation for the Patriot League, so maybe the strategy is changing. Racking up wins against bottom dwellers doesn't help anybody, so if this tougher scheduling is in fact true, I'm all for it. The team will be battle tough by the time conference play gets here.

This post was edited on 3/12 7:17 PM by Airstrike
This post was edited on 3/12 7:18 PM by Airstrike